The Best of Notable Quotables; December 23, 1991

Vol. Four; No. 26


Willie Horton Award (for Sophisticated Political Analysis)


“Demagogues don’t yell ‘nigger’ or ‘Jew boy’ anymore. They’ve learned better...[Duke] traded in his bigoted rhetoric for a slick new glossary of coded appeals to racial resentment, market tested over the past two decades by mainstream conservative politicians.”

Time Washington reporter Dan Goodgame, November 25 news story.


Runners-up:


“[Lee Atwater] was a scoundrel, one of the darkest figures to dominate our recent politics, a man with a comprehensively cynical view of his fellow creatures....He made it in the most improbable way, learning to dress at Brooks Brothers and keep his funky white trash wickedness too....In running campaigns that played on racial divisions, he was something worse than a bigot; he was a man who pretended to be a bigot in hope that it would sell.”

Washington Post op-ed by reporter Marjorie Williams, March 30.

“I think that he [Thomas] had the advantage of prime time on Friday night. He had everything going for him. The Democrats did not ask him tough questions about the facts of her charge and they did, the Republicans did a great job of hammering her. It’s basically what happened in the ‘88 campaign. The Republicans know how to fight dirty.”

– NBC congressional reporter Andrea Mitchell, October 15 Today.